Earth formations are mined to recover valuable minerals that are incorporated in the earthen formations or are covered by an earthen overburden. For example, Northern Alberta has oil sands formations that contain valuable bitumen hydrocarbons. Various techniques are in use or have been discussed for recovery of bitumen hydrocarbons from oil sands formations. In accordance with one method of recovery, the oil sands formations are mined to remove in situ bitumen bearing ore from the formation in which it is found. The removed oil sands ore is then processed to separate the hydrocarbons from the sand and mineral materials. Once separated, the hydrocarbons are then further processed into intermediate or finished products such as synthetic crude oil, fuels and the like.
When the mining method of extraction is employed, the oil sands ore extracted from the earth is transported to a processing facility where separation of the bitumen hydrocarbons from the other materials in the ore can take place. The mined oil sands ore is typically transported to processing facilities by truck or by slurry transport via a pipeline or by combinations of the two or by other mechanisms. Frequently, the oil sands ore is mined at a considerable distance from where the process of separating the oil sands into hydrocarbons, sand and minerals takes, place. Distance affects conditioning and recovery in hydrotransport systems, consequently, transport of the mined ore to a separation facility typically involves transporting the mined ore significant distances. Moreover, the location from which the ore is taken changes over time as the oil sands ore is depleted as a result of formation mining, consequently resulting in migration of the mining site along the formation. Because the location of the source of oil sands ore changes over time, the ore transport start point at the mining site must be mobile to permit the ore to begin transport from the source formation site as that changes over time.
One mechanism for transport of the ore to the separation facility is by forming the mined ore into a slurry. Suitable solvents, for example water, are mixed with the processed ore to form a slurry and the slurry produced is then transported to a separation processing facility over a pipeline. To prepare the ore for slurry transport, the mined ore is preferably comminuted into the smaller particle size to facilitate transport by slurry pumping. Furthermore, large rocks and other undesirable oversized solids are not candidate slurry components. In one manner of operation these oversized solids are removed or separated from the processed ore that is to be formed into a slurry. In another manner of operation these oversized solids are crushed and included with the processed ore that is to be formed into a slurry. Because the location where the ore is extracted from will change over time, it is preferable to have readily movable slurry equipment to reduce the need for long transport from the mining area to the slurry processing equipment.